Now I'm no Joseph Smith when it comes to fake writings but this just WREAKS of fake propaganda in my opinion.This website claims to be about Mormon convert stories.Have a look through them and see if you actually think that this webpage is authentic.

Here is one particularly humorous excerpt from a 'Catholic conversion story'-' I asked my mother for a Bible. This was not something encouraged by my church, but after prolonged asking on my part, my mother finally bought me a Catholic Bible'.I mean they could have at least gotten the fact that the Bible is the only Christian text Catholics use right.

http://www.mormonconverts.com/catholic/the-puzzle.htm

Definitely fake. The owner of the website is "Marketing Best Practices." The church must have hired them to create this.

http://whois.domaintools.com/mormonconverts.com


The same thing happened with the I'm a Mormon campaign. The first few were actors until they found real people to star in them.

How does he get away with NOT saying this is approved by the mothership?

Shouldn't their be a disclaimer?

http://www.mormonconverts.com/legaldisclaimer.htm
http://www.pagespan.com/mormonconverts.com
http://www.marketingbestpractices.com/about-us
http://www.marketingblogger.com/about-me/
http://www.mormonconverts.com/presbyterian/My-Journey-To-The-Church.htm

Someone up above in this thread mentioned that the first few "I am a Mormon" campaign ads were done by actors. How do we know that. Is there a source somewhere to confirm?

I would love some references, sources, etc. that show that the "I am a Mormon" campaign used actors, or that Ensign articles are fake. Anyone have some of those?

I either read about it from Daymon Smith's "Book of Mammon" or else I heard it on a Mormon Stories Podcast. I'll try and find the page or source after work.

Well, for one thing she says she "...vividly remembered living with my Heavenly Father..."

That's a mormon No No--you're not SUPPOSED to remember that jazz.

I think it's legit story, she was lookin' for somethin' and the mishies sold her on TSCC's version.
I was amused about the Catholic bible and KJV bible bit so she could "compare" them; has she ever compared the KJV and the JST? Heh, heh.....

The New American Bible of the Catholic Church is hugely better than the KJV or the NIV presently used by most churches. The explanatory texts are great. The footnotes are superb. The mormon KJV not only has the erroneous changes made by JS but also has misleading headnotes! I am writing this as one who has numerous versions which I compare on a regular basis.

Fifty years ago, prior to Vatican II (the Second Vatican Council--which changed the Roman Catholic religion permanently and enormously, and on countless levels) Catholics were NOT "encouraged" to read "the Bible" (even the Roman Catholic-approved version).

I know this for a fact: my husband, who graduated from high school in the mid-1940s, was born and raised Catholic in a 100% Roman Catholic family that went back centuries, and his relatives were people like his maternal aunt, the Mother Superior of one of the most socially elite private Catholic girls' schools on the East Coast) said that he was taught by his parish priests (in sermons on Sundays and Holy Days) and by his teachers (nuns and priests) that lay people were NOT supposed to just "read the Bible," because they could "misinterpret" what even their own Roman Catholic-approved Bible said.

Instead, they were (ideally) to restrict themselves to the snippets of Bible that were included in their prayers books and were talked about in sermons given from the pulpit on Sundays and Holy Days, because these had been approved for general lay Catholics. Even in religion classes in Catholic schools, Bibles were not "read." Instead, specific excerpts were discussed in the light of what was at that time Catholic-approved interpretation. The exception was for males who were in Catholic schools which were dedicated to educating future priests and brothers, but even for future male clergy, "frivolous" Bible reading was discouraged.

To anyone who knows anyone who was Catholic pre-Vatican II, this actually rings very true, because "Bible reading" was NOT encouraged (and I do not think it is "encouraged" to this very day...though there is undoubtedly a lot more tolerance for it allowed).

Mormons have their things that ring odd to non-Mormons, and Catholics have (or had, in the past but still within the lifetimes of living Catholics today) their oddities as well.

Catholics are not big Bible readers, even today.

I think this "Mormon story" could well be actually true. My husband, the born-and-raised-and-now-ex-Catholic, would say this same thing too.

if so, it's near my house. It's a park now, and I take my dog there often.

Hervey Willets Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> if so, it's near my house. It's a park now, and I
> take my dog there often.

I have no idea. She wasn't MY aunt! :-) (From the stories my husband has told me, she was definitely not a nice person--unless you were of the "proper" social class and were wealthy enough to qualify as "respectable" by not only her personal standards, but by the equally elevated standards of the socially prominent parents who sent their daughters to her boarding school to transform them into the future wives that very rich men and their families would want.)

The school was in Baltimore, and it was evidently a much-desired magnet for wealthy-already-and-aspiring-to-be-wealthIER Catholic girls from the late 1800s up through the Great Depression.

True or not, the conversion stories are stupid through and through.

Not good marketing in my opinion.

I've seen similar sites for converts to Catholicism, including ex-Mormons. People do switch religions, and they go every direction.

The thing is that I am a current Catholic so that's why this whole thing seems more than a little off to me.I am also a teacher and, religion being part of the curriculum, I read the bible to my class often.I can honestly say that I have Never ever heard of the Catholic church saying anything about not reading the bible.

It seems to me that someone googled 'Ex-Catholic' or something along those lines and has managed to weave all the negatives into a Conversion story.It would be like me pretending to be Ex Mormon and saying things like 'I used to hate the way we had to attend church for three hours on a Sunday'.It would be the most obvious thing to say.

Actually, many. many years ago the Catholic Church did discourage Bible reading by the laity. That is not so today, nor has it been for a long time. As I indicated in a post above, the Catholic version today is excellent. I use it in the Bible study at a Baptist church.

This would be such a good website if it actually had real stories with substance. To me it seems like the writing style of each story is similar and they lack substance.

You know how each person on RFM has a story complete with details of why each of us left the church? Well in this case, none of the stories I read so far contained any doctrinal or belief issues with the previous church, just that they went.

That brings up the most glaring part about the stories is that many of them sound like twists on Joseph Smith's first vision. Seriously, I read protestant, pentacostal, and most of the Methodist and they all sound like they were written by the same person. A Mormon. Actually, a UTAH Mormon since they are so clueless to others beliefs and want to gloss over it by saying " I looked at all these other churches but couldn't believe any of them. Now I know they're all wrong and the Mormon church is the one true church."

What are the chances of having 80% of the stories including a variation on that yet not one offering any substantial details? Next to none.

I think mormonconverts.com is a fake.

I really did enjoy this quote describing this dude's baptism though: "I asked to be baptized into this amazing church and was duly dunked by Dick"

Read it here: http://www.mormonconverts.com/Pentecostal/god-does-amazing-work.htm

If that doesn't work it was the second pentacostal. The dude that supposedly came from a group of hundreds of millions that's impressed by the mormons having 13 million....ya right ;)

@ Smithscars,Lol totally agreed.A phonecall from his long lost cousin Dick??Hmm....

Literally in tears laughing here.

There are indeed some Very questionable 'Convert stories' on this webpage!!None too personal or detailed and all sound like outsider perspectives.Again it sounds like they have just picked a few random pieces of information about their previous conviction...and then go on to say how Great Mormonism is.

But it has no,I repeat NO affiliation with the church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints...

"I vividly remembered living with my Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. I remembered walking with my other brother, Lucifer and begging him to listen to Father and not to be so stubborn. I remembered crying when some of my friends were cast out of Heaven. "

Sounds like this person - if real (probably not) - needs to put the LSD (and the LDS) down and back away slowly.

cecil0812 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "I vividly remembered living with my Heavenly
> Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. I remembered
> walking with my other brother, Lucifer and begging
> him to listen to Father and not to be so stubborn.
> I remembered crying when some of my friends were
> cast out of Heaven. "

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg0xBjegI7A

we've talked about it here before but a lot of the faith promoting ensign articles are fake too (written by professional writers and not faithful converts or TBM families) Same with Friend magazine.

Why does this site have entries for Anglican AND Church of England AND Church of Ireland (They're the same church) likewise the Church of Scotland IS the Presbyterian Church. I'm surprised they don't have an entry for the Church of Wales(Methodist)

Haha, they've got malware on their site

i think we should submit a conversion story starting with

"i never thought it would happen to me..."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/28/2013 05:33PM by wowbagger.

I don't know if it's fake or not. It does seem a bit juvenile in it's style. It does mention something I talked about on an earlier post. The survey I took to see why people went to the church's they did, and what they believed. The observation in the story fit my experience of people just go because that's what their family does. They don't know what they believe, and don't really care.

Ok,seriously,the more I read of this website the faker it seems.In the initial story I referred to above the woman says that she began studying different religions in secondary school 'slanted of course by my Catholic teacher'.

She also apparently went to 'Mass',spelled with a capital letter,which no Catholic would do, 'in the morning or Saturday night'.Lol.If that doesn't sound like someone just asked a Catholic when they hold mass then I don't know what does.

Further the missionaries apparently strayed from their usual first meeting when speaking to her.How does she know what their first topic should have been as a Nevermo at that stage???

Finally,her parting praise of the church is just truly laughable.I can't help but feel the LDS slant on her writing.Can any ex-Mo,never Catholics give me their opinion??

thus differentiating it from any other masses. In fact, I see it on church bulletins and websites that way so I don't know where your information is coming from. Do you live in the US?

Also,the church probably wanted some positive 'Conversion stories' for people who look up converting to Mormonism on the net.It seems more relatable if other members of your faith have already gone before you.

I grew up in a town that was 90% Roman Catholic (including half of my father's family), though I was raised Baptist. I can't say if the whole thing is fake or not but a couple of things in it rang true to me.

Catholics do have their own version of the Bible which includes the books of the Apocrypha along with the OT & NT.


I chuckled at the part about going to mass 'in the morning or Saturday night'. There were 8 Catholic churches in town in my youth. All had Sunday morning & Saturday afternoon mass at 4 or 5 pm. The most popular Saturday mass was at the small Syrian Catholic church down the block from my Nana's house. Every week, there'd be an overflow crowd out onto the sidewalk.

Why? . . there were maybe 10 Syrians left in town. Because their priest gave a 20-min quickie mass. No hymns, just prayers, homily & collection plate. And your religious obligation for the week was complete!

How I envied my friends who got to sleep in Sunday mornings!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/28/2013 08:06PM by janebond462.

The Apocrypha is not only used by the Catholics but also by the eastern Orthodox religions and the Anglicans. Most Protestants don't use it because Calvin and others ditched it. Reading the Apocrypha one sees the evolution of Judaism between the old and new testaments. One also notes the Book of Judith which JS used in his creation of part of 1st Nephi, only he replaced a heroine with a hero.

this guy certainly does

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIL7zk0_e7s